Smart Words About Cinema
[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] NASHVILLE. Bantam Books (paperback), illustrated. No pagination. $2.25. On the spine it says “Robert Altman’s Nashville.” On the cover it says “Robert Altman’s Award-Winning Nashville, with an Introduction by Joan Tewkesbury.” On the title page, it says “Nashville, an Original Screenplay by Joan Tewkesbury.” This new and [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 48, February 1976] ‘B’ MOVIES. By Don Miller. Curtis Books. 350 pages. $1.50. KINGS OF THE Bs. Edited by Todd McCarthy and Charles Flynn. Dutton. 561 pages. $6.95. “If some bright new critic should awaken the world to the merits of Joseph Lewis in the near future,” Andrew Sarris once [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 54, June 1977] THE NEW WAVE. By James Monaco. Oxford University Press. 372 pages. $15.95. The French New Wave is the richest single “trend” in the cinema of the second half of this century, and the only aspect of film history that presently seems to have much relevance to the [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 58-59, August, 1978] VISIONARY FILM. By P. Adams Sitney. Oxford University Press. 452 pages. $13.95. ABSTRACT FILM AND BEYOND. By Malcolm LeGrice. The MIT Press. 160 pages. $12.50. THE CUBIST CINEMA. By Standish D. Lawder. New York University Press. 265 pages. $11.75 (paperback). THE ESSENTIAL CINEMA. Edited by P. Adams [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] THE GIRL IN THE HAIRY PAW: King Kong as Myth, Movie, and Monster. Edited by Ronald Gottesman and Harry Geduld. Foreword: Rudy Behlmer. Layout and Design: Anthony Basile. An Avon Books “Flare” Edition. Paperbound, coffeetable size. 286 pages, illustrated. $5.95. A browser’s delight, this paperbound first printing [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] BIG BAD WOLVES: Masculinity in the American Film. By Joan Mellen. Pantheon. 368 pages. $12.95. If memory serves, Professor Joan Mellen is not a fan of Pauline Kael’s, but the two ladies have things in common. Both have the (fortunately) rare gift of being simultaneously very readable [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 57, February 1978] THE VAMPIRE FILM. By Alain Silver and James Ursini. A.S. Barnes & Co.; The Tantivy Press. 238 pages. Illustrated. $10. THE VAMPIRE CINEMA. By David Pirie. Crown Publishers: Crescent Books. 176 pages. Illustrated. $7.98. Two recent books on vampire movies, both apparently bidding to become the definitive [...]
In our campaign to republish every issue of Movietone News, we weren’t sure what to do with the book reviews. Unlike movies (most movies, anyway), books are revised over time, or go out of print, and the editions reviewed in these issues are invariably different from the editions currently available. Nonetheless, they engage the state [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] No event exists without the process by which it is apprehended and understood. It is irrelevant and impossible to refer it to an absolute standard like realism because the means of measurement cannot be extricated from the observation. The relationship between the real and the surreal is [...]
Late last year—late afternoon on 2011′s final day, in fact—I emailed the editors of the forthcoming book Film Noir: The Directors my essay on Fritz Lang. As of March 1, the book has come forth in reality. A couple of dozen film noir scholars and/or fans have written on slightly more than that number of key [...]
In the age of Netflix, when just about any film made anywhere can be summoned painlessly to your mailbox [or streamed to your flatscreen], we do well to remember that once upon a time there were only a handful of independently operated movie theaters in the United States dedicated to showing foreign-language cinema. Prints were [...]